Bibliotheca Sacra 109 (Apr. 1952): 164-74.
Copyright © 1952 by
Department of
New Testament Greek and Literature
The
In the Jewish Apocryphal Literature: Pt. 2
By George E. Ladd, Ph.D.
(Continued
from the January-March Number, 1952)
JUBILEES
The book of Jubilees may be roughly
but not inaccur-
ately described as a Jewish
commentary on Genesis and
Exodus
1-12. It has often been called the "Little Genesis,"
the term "little" referring not to its
size but to the detail
into which it enters. It consists of an
interpretation of his-
tory from creation to Mount
Sinai in the interests of later
Judaism. This history is organized artificially
into jubilees,
periods of 49 years. Each jubilee consists of
seven weeks
of years, or 49 years. The formal setting of the
book is
that of an apocalypse or revelation, because it
represents it-
self to be a revelation made to Moses on
entire course of human history from creation to the
new
creation (Jub. 1:4,
26). The book is sometimes called the
Apocalypse of Moses. The author rewrites
history to suit
his own taste and to support the interests which he
repre-
sents, omitting from the Old
Testament record much that
is offensive to his views, changing other items,
and adding
a great deal of traditional material.
Numerous quotations from the book
are found in the
church fathers from the second to the twelfth
centuries,
when it was apparently lost sight of. In the
mid-nineteenth
century, it was discovered by a Christian
missionary in
scripts are now known, and scholarship is
greatly indebted
to R. H. Charles for his work in the Ethiopic
version.1
1Cf. R. H. Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees
(
(164)
About one-fourth of the book has
been recovered in a
Latin version. Scholars agree that
both the Ethiopic and
the Latin versions were translated from a lost
Greek version
which appears in the quotations of the Greek fathers.
The
Greek
was probably derived from the original Semitic form.
The date of the book has been
vigorously debated, for
there are no fixed data by which a certain time may
be
postulated. The most commonly accepted date is the
second
half of the second century B.C., the times of the
Maccabees,2
although scholars have dated it anywhere from the
third or
fourth centuries B.C. to the first century A.D.
The author is unknown, as is the
case with most of these
writings, but he seems to have shared Pharisaic
views. He
glorifies the Law and exalts especially the oral
law. By this
means he gives divine authority to observances in
Judaism
which were not contained in the written Law of the
Old
Testament,
the oral law being esteemed a part of the revela-
tion given to Moses on
tion from the heathen, absolutely
forbidding intermarriage
and table fellowship, and vigorously affirms
circumcision and
Sabbath observance.
The legalistic interest provides the
key to the eschatology
of the book. The author anticipates the coming of
the king-
dom of God,3 but
it is to be attained by the power intrinsic
in the Law of God. Jubilees looks forward to the
time when
"My
[God's] sanctuary has been built among them for
all eternity. And the Lord will appear to the eyes
of all, and
all will know that I am the God of Israel and the
Father of
all the children of Jacob, and King on
eternity. And
heavens and the earth shall be renewed and all
their creation
2R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees (
Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (2nd ed.;
and the excellent
note on the date of jubilees, pp. 84-90.
3It is to be noted that
in Jubilees, and in most of the apocalyptic literature,
the phrase "
the phrase that
we are studying, but the concept which lies behind it;
and the
expectation of the time when God would fulfill His promises
to His people and
exalt them in His kingdom continually reappears.
166 Bibliotheca Sacra
according to the powers of the heaven, and
according to all
the creation of the earth, until the sanctuary of
the Lord
shall be made in
naries be renewed for healing
and for peace and for blessing
for all the elect of
day and unto all the days of the earth" (1:27,
29).4
Again,
the author speaks of "
be sanctified in the new creation for a sanctification
of the
earth; through it will the earth be sanctified from
all [its]
guilt and its uncleanness throughout the generations
of the
world" (4:26).
The most extended passage is in
chapter 23. The author
describes a time of deep trouble when evil is to
dominate
everything; after this there will ensue the
kingdom. "For
calamity followeth on
calamity, and wound on wound, and
tribulation on tribulation, and evil tidings on evil
tidings,
and illness on illness, and all evil judgments such
as these,
one with another, illness and overthrow, and snow
and frost
and ice, and fever, and chills, and torpor, and
famine, and
death, and sword, and captivity, and all kinds of
calamities
and pains. And all these will come on an evil
generation
which transgresseth on the
earth: their works are unclean-
ness and fornication, and pollution and
abominations”
(23:13-14).
"And they will strive one with another, the
young with the old, and the old with the young, the
poor
with the rich, and the lowly with the great, and the
beggar
with the prince, on account of the law and the
covenant; for
they have forgotten commandment and covenant, and
feasts,
and months, and Sabbaths, and jubilees, and all judg-
ments. And they will stand
[with bows and] swords and
war to turn them back into the way; but they will
not return
until much blood hath been shed on the earth, one by
an-
4All quotations will be
found in R. H. Charles, ed.: The
Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (
Cf. also the very
convenient manual edition edited by G. H. Box, The
Book of Jubilees (
Documents published by S.P.C.K.
There does not exist a manual edi-
tion of the books of the Pseudepigrapha, although it is greatly to be
desired.
other. And those who have escaped will not return
from
their wickedness to the ways of righteousness, but
they will
all exalt themselves to deceit and wealth, that
they may each
take all that is his neighbor's, and they will name
the great
name, but not in truth and not in righteousness, and
they
will defile the holy of holies with their
uncleanness and the
corruption of their pollution. And a great punishment
will
befall the deeds of this generation from the Lord, and
He
will give them over to the sword and to judgment and
to
captivity, and to be plundered and devoured. And
He will
wake up against them the sinners of the Gentiles,
who have
neither mercy nor compassion, and who will
respect the
person of none, neither old nor young, nor any one,
for they
are more wicked and strong to do evil than all the
children
of men.
And they will use violence against
sion against Jacob,
And much blood will be shed upon the earth,
And there will be none to gather and none to
bury.
In those days they will cry aloud,
And call and pray that they may be saved from
the hand
of the
sinners, the Gentiles;
But none will be saved.
And the heads of the children will be white with
grey
hair,
And a child of three weeks will appear old like
a man of
one hundred
years,
And their stature will be destroyed by
tribulation and
oppression.
And in those days the children will begin to
study the
laws,
And to seek the
commandments,
And to return to the
path of righteousness.
And the days will begin to grow many and
increase
among those
children of men,
Till their days draw nigh to one thousand years,
And to a greater number of years than [before]
was the
number of
the days.
168 Bibliotheca Sacra
And there will be no old man
Nor one who is not satisfied with his days,
For all will be [as] children and youths.
And all their days they will complete and live
in peace
and in joy,
And there will be no Satan nor
any evil destroyer;
For all their days will be days of blessing and
healing,
And at that time the Lord will heal His
servants,
And they will rise up and see great peace,
And drive out their adversaries.
And the righteous will see and be thankful,
And rejoice with joy for ever and ever,
And will see all their judgments and all their
curses on
their
enemies.
And their bones will
rest in the earth,
And their spirits will have much joy,
And they will know that it is the Lord who executeth
judgment,
And showeth mercy to
hundreds and thousands and to
all that
love Him" (23:19-31).
Jubilees, like many of the
apocalypses, anticipates a period
of deep trouble before the inauguration of the
blessedness of
the kingdom. This became a normal feature in Jewish
escha-
tology and grows out of such
Old Testament passages as
Isaiah
26:17, Jeremiah 22:23, Daniel 12:1, Hosea 13:13, and
Micah
4:9. In later rabbinic theology, these troubles came
to be known as the "woes of the
Messiah." 5 If Jubilees was
written in the mid-second century B.C., it is
possible that the
author is describing the evils of his own time and
casting
the description into an apocalyptic mold, as it was
customary
5While this phrase,
"woes of the Messiah" or the "Messianic woes" is
commonly applied
to such descriptions as this in Jubilees, the word
"woes"
applied to them seems to have been used first in our Gospels in
Mark 13:8 and Matthew 24:8. Cf. for
further description of these
troubled times
Emil Schürer,
Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes
im Zeit-
alter Jesu Christi (4 Aufl.;
lation,
A History of the Jewish People in the
Time of Jesus Christ
(E.T.
of 2 ed.; New York: Scribner's, 1890), Vol. II, part ii, p. 154
ff ; Paul Volz, Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde (2 Aufl.
Tübingen, 1934), pp. 147 ff.
for apocalyptists to do.
We cannot be certain that this is
the case, but the parallelisms are indeed striking.6
In the
times of the Maccabees,
there were strong Hellenizing influ-
ences among the Jews which
led many to forsake the observ-
ance of the Law and the
practice of their religious customs
in favor of Greek ways. This situation is depicted
in I Mac-
cabees 1 and II Maccabees 4. The most important element
in the evil times to the author of Jubilees is the
abandonment
of the Law (23:19); this is the reason for the
evil character
of the times. It was this same apostasy which
brought about
the Maccabean rebellion.
These evil times are immediately to
precede the coming
of the kingdom. This kingdom in Jubilees will see
God take
His
sanctuary in
forever among His people,
be the means of purifying all the earth from all
uncleanness
forever (4:26), and the heavens and the earth
and all things
therein contained will be renewed. This
expectation is based
upon such prophecies as Isaiah 65:17, 66:22. The
character
of the kingdom is vividly pictured and is
described largely
in terms of physical well-being. The chief feature
will be
longevity; men will begin to live for a thousand
years and
to enjoy eternal youth. Evil will be purged, and
the enemies
of
heaped upon them (23:30). It is clearly a
the Gentiles are their adversaries whom they curse
and who
will have no place in the kingdom, but are destined
to
destruction.
The means of the inauguration of the
kingdom is nothing
more or less than the Law. Evil times were to come
upon
forgotten the commandment and covenant : but when
the
children begin to study the laws and to seek the
command-
ments and to return to the
path of righteousness, a gradual
transformation ensues; and as the Law
has its divine effect
upon human life, the ideal of the theocracy becomes
fully
6Cf. H. H. Rowley, op. cit., pp. 89-90.
170 Bibliotheca Sacra
realized in
There
is no mention of a Messiah or of any Messianic
agency, other than the Law. It has the power resident
within
itself to bring about the kingdom. Charles does, to be
sure,
think that he detects the anticipation of a Messiah
in
31:18-19:7
"And to
May the Lord give thee strength and power
To tread down all that hate
thee;
A prince shalt thou
be, thou and one of thy sons, over
the sons of
Jacob ;
May thy name and the name of thy sons go forth
and
traverse
every land and region.
Then will the Gentiles fear before thy face,
And all the nations will quake.
In thee shall be the help of Jacob,
And in thee be found the salvation of
In
this Rowley concurs.8 The two most
exhaustive studies
in Jewish eschatology9 make no mention
of this verse, and we
must conclude therefore that Volz
and Bousset fail to recog-
nize any messianic
significance here. If this has messianic
reference, it is a rather vaguely expressed hope.10
Probably
the author here refers to the historical David rather
than to
the Messiah.
Even if the passage is messianic it
must be admitted, as
indeed Charles does,11 that the Messiah has
no role to play
in the coming of the kingdom. We must conclude
that, to
the author of Jubilees, no Messiah was necessary to
bring
the kingdom. If
would come.
The duration of the kingdom is
clearly everlasting, and
its scene is the earth. But Charles feels that the
kingdom
7R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees, pp. lxxxvii, 188.
8H. H. Rowley, op. cit., p. 62.
9Paul Volz,
op. cit.; and Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion
des Judentums
im späthellenistischen Zeitalter (3 Aufl. by Hugo Gressmann; Tübingen,
1926).
10Cf. G. H. Box, The Book of Jubilees, pp. xxvi, 160.
11R. H. Charles, loc. cit.
must be temporary12 because several
references throughout
the book anticipate a day of judgment,13
and there is no
possible room for a judgment before the kingdom,
which
comes itself by a gradual transformation and not by
sudden
catastrophic events. This judgment
must therefore come at
the close of the kingdom; and this order of events
leads to
the conclusion that the kingdom is to be of
temporal duration.
This reasoning is logically
persuasive, but still not exeget-
ically sound. The extended
description of the kingdom in
chapter 23 makes it clear that the Law is to
transform both
God's
people and their environment into a state of blessed-
ness which is, to last forever, and beyond which no
greater
blessings could be anticipated. The references to
a day of
judgment throughout the book may be accounted for
by the
fact that this was a common concept in the Old
Testament
which came, to permeate Jewish thought, so that it
was an
intrinsic part of the eschatological vocabulary.
The author
of Jubilees uses the words even though he has no
logical
place in his anticipation of the future where a day
of judg-
ment could actually take
place.
One final eschatological feature
remains to be noted. As
the kingdom is inaugurated on the earth and as the
Jews
who will then be alive begin to experience the full
effect of the
Law,
the author says that the righteous will behold this sal-
vation and will rejoice when
they see their enemies suffering
the curses which apparently they had themselves
heaped upon
them. Jubilees then says, "And their bones will
rest in the
earth, and their spirits will have much joy"
(12:31). This
is an unusual note in Jewish eschatology,
particularly in a
book which reflects the Pharisaic viewpoint to the
extent of
Jubilees. Almost uniformly, the full blessings of
God in the
future life can be experienced only in a resurrected
body.
Sometimes
this resurrection is portrayed in the crudest of
physical terminology.14
12R. H. Charles, op. cit., p. 150.
134:19, 24; 5:10-16; 9:15;
10:8, 17, 22; 22:21; 23:11; 24:28; 36:10.
14Cf. II Maccabees 7:11-12, 14:46.
172 Bibliotheca Sacra
Bodily, physical resurrection is a normal doctrine in
Palestinian Jewish literature. In some areas, the
influences
of Hellenistic thought are detected, especially in
books which
are thought to have originated in
of Solomon teaches the doctrine of the
preexistence of the
soul and its immortality15; and IV Maccabees envisages
a blessed immortality with no bodily
resurrection.16 Jubilees,
however, does not elsewhere manifest the influences of Hel-
lenistic thought, and it is
difficult therefore to attribute this
concept of a happy immortality to Greek
influences. Jubilees
expressly denies a resurrection for the
"righteous," but af,
firms a state of blessedness for their spirits after
death. In
a similar vein, the wicked pass into condemnation
in Sheol
at death.
"And there will not be left any man that eateth blood.
Or that sheddeth the
blood of man on earth,
Nor will there be left to him any seed or
descendants
living
under heaven;
For into Sheol will
they go,
And into the place of condemnation will they
descend.
And into the darkness of the deep will they all
be re-
moved by a
violent death" (7:29).
"And as for all the worshippers of idols
and the profane
There will be no hope for them in the land of
the living;
And there will be no remembrance of them on
earth;
For they will descend into Sheol,
And into the place of condemnation will they
go"
(22:22).
It is quite true that, in other
places, Jubilees speaks of
death as the "eternal sleep"17
with no mention of life after
death for them. Volz
concludes therefore that the "righteous"
in 23:30 cannot be the Old Testament saints, and
they clearly
are not to be identified with those who enter the
kingdom
and who live a thousand years and who then,
presumably,
15Wisdom of Solomon 8:20,
2:22-3:4.
16IV Maccabees
5:36, 16:13, 18:23.
17Cf. 36:1, 18; 23:1,
45:15.
die; for this blessing of the "righteous"
is experienced at
the beginning of the kingdom, not at its close. Volz feels
compelled to conclude that the
"righteous" must be martyrs
who have been put to death by their enemies, whose
tortured
bones now find rest in the earth but whose spirits
are led
into blessedness.18
This seems like forced exegesis. It
is easier to assume that
the author is a man who ordinarily speaks in the
Old Testa-
terminology of death19 and the day of
judgment, but
who at this point mixes in his own expectations of
the future,
to the confusion of any distinct eschatological
system or
order of events. We shall see in later articles that
the doctrine
of the intermediate state experienced considerable
amplifica-
tion in these Jewish
writings.20 In Jubilees, the intermediate
state becomes the place of final blessing for both
the righteous
and the wicked.21 However it is to be
explained, the picture
of a state of blessedness without a resurrection
of the body
is clear.
In conclusion, it should be
re-emphasized that the author
is primarily interested in the Law. He is not
concerned with
eschatology as such; he is concerned with the
relation of
God's people to God's Law. When they forsake it,
evil in-
creases; but when they obey it, righteousness
prevails to the
extent that the very world itself is transformed. When
the
Law
can achieve this, any other messianic agency or person-
age to inaugurate the kingdom is unnecessary. The
author
does not make it his purpose to answer various questions
which might be asked about the resurrection and the
future
life. Indeed he seems to be rather confused in his
own think-
18Paul Volz,
op. cit., p. 29.
19Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5,
Jeremiah 51:39, 57
20Cf. especially Enoch 22,
where the intermediate state is portrayed as a
place both of
punishment and blessing. This portion of Enoch is usual-
ly
dated 168-100 B.C.
21Cf. Psalms of Solomon
3:13, 14; 14:6; 15:11-15 and Enoch 53, 54, 67,
where Sheol appears to be the place of permanent punishment of
the
wicked.
174 Bibliotheca Sacra
ing. That the Law can bring
God's people on earth into king-
dom blessings of a perfect
life is enough for him. In this
fact, even the dead saints rejoice.
(To be continued in the July-September Number, 1952)
"The
New Testament very frequently quotes, and much
more frequently contains, incidental allusions to
the Old. The
Pentateuch,
the prophetic books, the Psalms and other parts
of the sacred volume of the Hebrews were
continually on
the minds of the writers, and flowed out in all
their sayings
and writings as if welling up from the depths of
their
innermost religious consciousness. But in all
these quotations
and allusions we look in vain for a reference to
any of
the Apocryphal books. Though there are many places
where
incidents of the Apocryphal writings would afford illustra-
tions exceedingly apt and
beautiful, yet no such illustrations
are ever found. If the writers of the New Testament
were
acquainted with any of these books (and it is
scarcely pos-
sible to doubt that they had
seen some of them), most care-
fully must they have abstained from alluding to them
in
their canonical writings. They sanctioned the whole
Hebrew
canon as it existed in their time, but they
sanctioned none
of the Apocryphal books; for they never quote
them, and
these books never formed a part of the Hebrew canon.
We
speak of the ancient Apocryphal books which are
printed in
the Vulgate Bible, and not of the more recent ones
such as
the Book of Enoch, the Ascension of Moses, etc.
These, it is
true, sometimes borrow from the New Testament (cf. 2
Tim.
3:8,
Jude 9, 14); but the New Testament never from them,
since it is itself more ancient than they are, or at
least more
ancient than the probably interpolated passages
on which the
stress is laid."—Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1854